1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing control method and a printing control device.
2. Related Art
As is well known, for printers which perform printing by discharging color inks from a printing head thereof, calibration for correcting, for each of the color inks, discharged ink amounts into optimum discharged ink amounts is performed. In such calibration, colorimetric values of a test pattern are obtained by causing a target printer to perform printing of the test pattern on paper, and for each of the color inks, correction values which compensate for differences of the obtained colorimetric values with optimum color values (reference values) of the test pattern are calculated.
Thereafter, in the target printer, for each of the color inks, discharged ink amounts are corrected by the correction values.
A typical printer is capable of performing printing of an image on each of a plurality of types of paper whose characteristics are mutually different. Further, even when, in order to cause a printer to perform printing of the same image on each of two types of paper, an identical set of amounts of an ink is caused to be discharged on each of the two types of paper, two sets of colorimetric values of printed images each printed on a corresponding one of the two types of paper are mutually different because the characteristics of the two types of paper are mutually different. For this reason, the calibration must have been performed for each of the plurality of types of paper whose characteristics are mutually different. That is, correction values calculated on the basis of colorimetric values obtained by performing printing of the test pattern on a certain type of paper (referred to as paper A) are correction values only for use in printing on the paper A.
When, however, calibration for the paper A is desired, the paper A cannot always be prepared only for printing of the test pattern. For example, when a user desires calibration for the paper A, there may be a case where the paper A is not stored near the user, or there may be a case where, even though the paper A is stored near the user, the user is required not to use the paper A as much as possible because the paper A is relatively expensive and is hard to be obtained. In such a case, the calibration for the paper A is difficult to be performed, and this situation has been significantly inconvenient for users.